Fallen
by eliana-moran
Summary: Effected more deeply than anyone ever imagined by Tom's intrusion into her life, Ginny is drowning in the darkness.  Will someone be there to catch her when she falls?  warning: contains suicide attempt
1. Taking Over Me

Lying on her bed, half awake, staring at the ceiling, Ginevra Weasley was lost in her own thoughts yet again.

He was taking over. So many things within her now were him. He had been a part of her for a year; he had been part of her literally more often than she would like to recall. She tried so hard not to think of him, but when it comes down to it, you can't decide what you dream and she couldn't stop dreaming. Every time she closed her eyes he was there.

The problem was that she didn't _want_ to forget him. She knew she should, should want to that is, but she just couldn't bring herself to let him go. She was sure that he wouldn't remember her, the part of him that was left in the world, but she would never forget the sixteen year old version she had allowed so close.

She had tried not to fall in love with him, she really had. She was only eleven, after all, and he was sixteen. Well, he would have been sixteen if he had been corporeal. What separated them was even worse than age. He was stuck in a diary. He couldn't hold her, she couldn't see him, and she tried so hard not to fall in love with him. But she had.

He was there for her when no one else was, when everyone else was ignoring her, was turning away from her, was leaving her alone. He had even known when things changed, when she had fallen in love with him and tried to hide it, tried to deny it, tried to ignore the pain. He had known and he had understood, he had comforted her. That was when she had known that he loved her as well.

The longer things had gone on, when she had realized that he was dangerous and had gotten scared and tried to get rid of the diary, he had forgiven her; he had taken her back.

_Fuck!_

She sat up and buried her face in her hands.

She knew he was evil. She knew he had tried to kill her. She knew what he was and what he would become. How stupid was she? How insane is it to be in love the one you most hate? How foolish was it to fall in love with the deadliest man to live? Hell, was her mind even her own anymore?

She couldn't help it. She loved him. She believed in him. He couldn't be everything she knew he was, everything the world said he was. She started to cry.

When the tears finally stopped she got up and started getting dressed. She honestly felt that she would be willing to give up everything just to find him again. She needed him. She needed to be with him. He was her life, literally. She needed him to breathe.

She stood before the mirror and stared at her reflection. The deeper she looked the more clearly she could see _him_. So many things in her were him. He was taking over.

She went down to breakfast and never noticed a pair of silver eyes watching her.


	2. Hello

a/n i'm posting this all at once because it's finished and my internet access is not consistent

* * *

She walked through the first term of her second year in a daze. She had no one to talk to anymore. She felt dead.

She stayed at the school over Christmas and walked the grounds absently, ignoring the cold. She almost felt like she had found a friend, the lie living for her so she could hide. She knew it wasn't safe, talking more to her own mind than anyone, but there was no one else.

She threw herself down into a snow bank and stared at the grey sky. She wasn't sure what was real anymore. Days drifted into each other and melted together until she couldn't tell one from the next. She heard her own voice speaking as though it belonged to another. She almost believed she watched herself from the outside, never really taking part in anything she did.

She knew if she smiled long enough and didn't believe the lies she would eventually wake from the dream that held her captive, she would become herself once more. The problem was she still didn't know who she was. Was she the tortured soul torn from the shadow she loved or was she the girl with her whole life ahead of her, a member of a loving family full of potential?

Recently she had discovered that she had stopped sleeping. She felt as though everyday took something else away from her, left her a little less of herself, whoever she was. She knew she should try to reconcile the mask she wore with the fragments behind it but why would she do that? Why would she try to fix the mask? _It_ wasn't broken. _It _was the only part of her that worked.

Again, silver eyes watched her unnoticed, silver eyes that were filled with understanding and compassion. No one else ever saw such depths behind the eyes for they only opened themselves when they surveyed her.

He had been watching her since she had come out of the chamber. It had begun as idle curiosity. She was, after all, the only innocent person he had ever known to exist. That summer he had learned the truth of what had happened. Now he watched her more closely than ever. He watched her and saw what no one else did, the darkness she now fought against for her life. He saw in her all the darkest parts of himself, all the pain and fears he desperately sought to deny.

Was it possible for either of them to win? Was it possible to deny the darkness its claim upon their lives? Could she escape Tom? Could he escape the death eaters? Would either of them escape the destiny others had written for them? She was strong. She would find a way out. Maybe, just maybe, when she did he could follow her, she could save him.


	3. Everybody's Fool

It was beginning to get to him, watching the Weasley girl. He really wanted to walk up to her and shake her. His compassion was becoming anger. His understanding was limited and biased. He saw her lies and ignored his own. He saw her beautiful mask and never thought of his own dark disguise.

He grew impatient though. She wasn't even fighting anymore. She had just accepted it.

He was having a bad day. Weasley and Potter were making it worse. They were breathing. He picked a fight.

Then _she_ showed up.

"Come on, Ron! Just ignore him. Let's go."

Ron was about to say something. It didn't really matter whether he was going to listen to her or not.

"Well, if it isn't Miss Perfect," Malfoy sneered. "You better listen to her, she knows everything."

Ginny just looked at him in disbelief. "What are you talking about?" There was a personal note in his tone that she didn't understand.

"You. You've got everyone fooled, haven't you? I mean, they practically bow down and worship you every time you walk past. I mean, some of these people must have you burnt into their retinas the way they stare." Even he winced. His bitterness whas sharp and his comments more personal than any he had ever made.

Ginny continued to meet his gaze. "I…what?" His comment about having everybody fooled…

"I know the truth, _Ginevra_," he said her name like an insult, "You're not real. You don't have any flaws, at least, not when you're pretending. Neither does this world you live in. It isn't real. It never will be. Have you _no_ shame?" He took a step closer to her. No one else existed. No one else mattered. "You don't see me. You don't see any of us," he flung his arm behind him to indicated, well, everyone. "You have no idea how you have betrayed us. You had a chance, but you walked away. But now I know the truth. You never were and never will be. Somehow, at the end of it all, you've _become_ everybody's fool. Without your mask, where will you hide? Or have you lost yourself in your lies?" He turned and walked away.

Ron turned to his sister, "What the hell was all of that?"

She shook her head, trying to hold back the tears, "I have no idea."

Up in her tower, Ginny tried to make sense of what he had said. If he knew who she really was, what she really dealt with, how could he think that she had betrayed them? Shouldn't he understand her better than anyone else? Or maybe that was it, maybe he expected her to figure a way out of the darkness and save them all. Was that the chance he was talking about? If it was… What kind of prick was he? What made her any different than him? His life was as much as a lie as hers was. Hell, that piece of shit could just save himself.

Out on the grounds, Malfoy was trying to figure out why he had reacted the way he had, why he had said all of those things. Finally, he decided he was relying on her too much. He had been expecting her to find a way out and to save him. Well, he wouldn't rely on her anymore. He wouldn't love her anymore. Then he stopped. He wouldn't love her anymore? He had never loved her! Bloody hell.


	4. Haunted

Ginny decided that she didn't really care what Malfoy thought. All that mattered to her was that some of what he had said was true. She had become everyone's fool. She had lost herself in the darkness of her mind and allowed her mask to become who she was. It was time she did something about that.

The problem was that she still heard Tom whispering in her head. She still heard his thoughts, his reactions. She still heard his opinions and she knew part of her still wanted him around.

No matter how hollow she had been feeling, she always knew she wasn't alone, not as long as he was still there. Even though she knew there was no reason for her to stay where she was, even though she couldn't come up with a reason when she tried, even though she could list a hundred why she should move on, she was still there.

She could still feel him. She _knew_ he was still watching her. She _knew_ he still wanted her. She could feel him pulling her down, further into the darkness. She was still afraid of him. She was still in love with him.

It was time she stopped him from pulling her down. She had to stop it.

She made up her mind. The only way out of this, the only way to be herself again, to be free, was to hunt him down. First, she had to hunt him down and get him out of her head. Then she had to hunt him down and get him out of the world. She could still smell him. He was still alive.

He was still watching her. He still wanted her. Wherever he was, she knew that much. He remembered. He had to. It didn't matter that it was a portion of his soul that was no longer part of him. There was a connection. There had to be. The feeling she had of being tied to him would not be this strong if the one she had been tied to had been completely destroyed.

She also knew this would be the hardest thing she had ever done. She still loved him. He had saved her.

She forced herself to remember. He had raped her. He had controlled her mind. He had completely and totally in every way possible violated her. She would _not_ let him pull her down.


	5. Imaginary

It was a cold December morning and Ginny couldn't move past the doorway. She just stood there. The dark shadows of her dreams were still calling to her.

She didn't want to move. She wanted to stay there, in the door. If she didn't move she didn't have to face the world. If she moved, she had to go to class, participate in life.

What she wanted most was to go out on the grounds. She wanted to be out in the wind. She wanted to listen to its whispers. It was kind, it was pleasant. It wasn't like the voices she heard inside, the voices she heard in the stillness. She wanted to stand in the rain. She wanted to listen to the stories it told as it fell. It brought a whole different world around her. It set her free. It protected her from everything else, shielded her.

She wanted to escape to her own world. She wanted to go home, to lie on her own bed in her own room. She wanted to be surrounded by the paper flowers she had pasted to her walls. She wanted to stare up at the ceiling she had painted purple and the cotton candy pink clouds that floated across it.

Eventually, she managed to drag herself downstairs. Halfway through the day she ran into Malfoy in the corridor. Unfortunately, there was no one else around. She braced herself for an attack.

None came. Instead, he just moved to walk past her.

She stepped in front of him. "I don't think so."

"What?" he said, exasperated.

"You have no right to judge me. You say I'm everyone's fool because I live behind a mask as what they want me be and nothing else. You say I've betrayed you because I'm not fighting. You have no right to say I'm out of touch with this rampant chaos of reality. You have no right to say I've given up. I know very well what lies outside of myself, the nightmare I _built_ my world to _escape_. You haven't been there to hear me screaming just because I'm afraid of the silence. You don't know what lives in my dreams, how I long for sleepless nights. Until you know _what_ I'm fighting, how the hell do you expect to judge my effort?" With that, she shoved past him and went on her way.


	6. My Immortal

That night, Ginny sat hugging her knees in the center of her bed with the drapes pulled tightly shut, crying. She was so tired of being here, afraid of everything, allowing all her childish fears to keep her down.

Screaming up at the ceiling, up at Tom, she said, "If you have to leave, why can't you just leave?!"

Her head fell back down and she was racked with sobs. His presence just wouldn't leave her alone, it was always with her, always lingering about.

None of the wounds he had given her were healing. The pain still cut through her dreams, they were simply too real to be ignored. They said that time healed everything, but they were wrong. There were too many things that time could not erase and too many wounds that could not heal if they could be remembered.

She remembered all the time she had listened to Tom cry about the way he had been treated as a child, about the loneliness and isolation, and she remembered all the times that she had comforted him. She remembered all the times that he had confided in her about his fears. He was so afraid of being alone forever, so afraid of being too weak to survive on his own, so afraid that he had become what he was to eliminate that possibility. She knew now that he had been lying. Oh, she was sure those fears were real, but so was his hatred and the enjoyment he found in another's pain. All the same, she chased away his fears just as she had wiped away his tears. If she was honest, she knew he still had all of her.

He had this resonating light that came from him, this energy, this _life_ that had captivated her the first time he had drawn her into his journal to meet him. She had been in awe of him. Now she was bound by his absence, by the whole he left in her life. His face haunted her once pleasant dreams. The voice he left in her head made her feel like she was going insane.

She had no idea how many times she had told herself that he was gone, but it didn't matter. Whether he was there or not, even when he had been, she was still alone. She knew that now. Malfoy's words had forced her to examine her life, herself, and she now knew that no one was there for her, no one ever had been. She had to stand on her own or fall.

She knew she was falling.


	7. Going Under

She was now standing in Moaning Myrtle's toilet. She had gotten Myrtle to leave by ranting about all that was wrong with her life. Myrtle couldn't stand to listen to anyone's problems but her own. Now she stood there, staring in the mirror over the sink that led to the Chamber of Secrets.

"I've cried fifty-thousand tears for you," she told her reflection, the one in whom she could still see Tom. "All the screaming, all the lies, all the bleeding…" she rolled up her sleeve so she could see her arm where she had traced now countless lines of blood, "and none of it reaches you! None of it matters because you still can't hear me!"

She leaned on the sink. "Well, I don't want your help this time! I'll save myself! Maybe," she walked away from the sink and continued talking as she paced the toilet, "I'll wake up for once. Maybe, just maybe, I'll end the torment and be free of you! Maybe I won't let you win day after day!"

She sank behind her knees against a wall. Whispering, now, she continued. "Just when I thought I'd reached the bottom, I'm here, dying again."

She was going under, she could feel it. She knew she was drowning. She felt like she was falling forever, there was no floor for her to hit, no sudden stop to end it all. She had to break through this. She had to surface.

But where was the truth? Where were the lies? Could she even tell the truth anymore? Hell, could she even tell was real and what was not?

She got up and started pacing again. The thoughts in her head were always so confused. She couldn't even trust herself anymore. She was dying, and she knew it.

She heard the door open and spun to face the intruder. It was Malfoy. He had been walking through the corridor when he had heard her screaming. Her words he disturbed him. He had thought about what she had said the other night and realized she was right. How could he know how hard she was fighting until he knew how strong her enemy was? After hearing her words now, he knew he had greatly underestimated the impact the diary had had on her. He was afraid for her. This wasn't something she could beat alone and that had been what he was expecting, demanding from her, what everyone had been requiring.

When she had stopped yelling, he had stood in front of the door, debating whether or not to go in. He was worried about her, but didn't know how she would receive him. Eventually, the concern won.

As soon as it registered to her who she was seeing, she screamed at him. "Go ahead! Yell at me! Scream at me! I'm so far away from reality you'd have to yell to get through to me, right?! I WON'T BE BROKEN AGAIN!" She sank to her knees where she stood. She spoke so lowly that he could barely hear her, "I've got to breathe. I can't keep going under like this."


	8. Tournequet

Malfoy took a step forward. "Ginevra…"

She took a step back, shaking her head. She had seen his face and knew what it meant. He was scared for her. He cared about her. For some reason that terrified her more than anything else. She drew her wand and threw up a barrier around herself. "Don't get any closer. I don't know what you want, why you're here, but I don't care. You said I wasn't fighting. I was. That's the problem. I was fighting. I can't fight anymore. I can't do this alone. I was fighting to survive. You wanted me to fight to live. Well, I tried. I lost."

He tried to get closer, ignoring her words, and was surprised at how strong a barrier she could produce. "I was wrong, Ginevra. I demanded too much. I expected you to win a battle ten times harder than the one I've been losing my entire life. Instead of understanding more than anyone else, like I should have, I demanded more. I'm sorry."

She started crying and shook her head until she was dizzy. "No! It doesn't matter. You can't help me. No one can help me. It's over. I'm too lost."

He watched in horror as she produced a pocket knife and, with trembling hands, made three vertical cuts on her left wrist.

"I tried to kill the pain," she said. Her voice was so weak. He fought against the wall. "But it only brought more," she continued. She dropped the knife as she tried to grasp it in her left hand. Carefully picking it up, she cut her right wrist. "There," she indicated the blood running across the floor, "is your betrayal. There is my…crimson regret."

"No…" Draco screamed as he slammed himself against the barrier. "No…" he whimpered as he slid down it to sit on the floor across from her.

She looked at him, confused. "I'm dying," she said simply.

"Let me through, I can save you," he pleaded.

"Am I too lost to be saved?" she asked. "I'm dying. I'm bleeding. I can't scream anymore."

"Just let me through…"

"Do you remember me?" she asked.

He could tell she was growing weaker. Tears started streaming down his face. "Yes," was all he could say.

"I've been lost for so long." She laid down on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. After a second or two of silence, she asked, "Will I see you on the other side, or will you forget me?"

"I'll never forget you," he promised.

He watched her blood pool around her. She was beautiful. He slammed his fist against the invisible wall that kept him from her.

"My wounds cry for the grave," she whispered. She rolled her head to face him again. "Not the ones on my arm, but the ones in my soul. It cries for deliverance. Will I be denied?" She closed her eyes.

He slammed his fist against he barrier so quickly he barely caught himself as the force of his blow carried him to the floor. She was now to weak to maintain the wall.

He hurried to her side and stopped the bleeding as quickly as he could.


	9. My Last Breath

She opened her eyes when she felt him draw her up in his arms. He had to lean close to her to hear her words.

"Hold me close," she said, "you know I can't stay long now. All I wanted to say was I love you. Can you hear me?"

He choked back his tears and nodded.

She turned her head into his chest and then looked back up at him. "Can you feel me in your arms?"

He nodded again.

"I can barely feel you. I love you. You saw me," she shuddered and he held her closer, "when no one else did. I hated you. I was afraid of you. But I fell in love with you the second you came through that door." Her eyes closed again. She tried to take a deep breath. "But it's okay now. All my thoughts of you are now safe inside me. All the pain ends here now."

He pulled her as close to himself as he could, burying his face in her hair.

"I'll miss the winter, all the world is so fragile then. I think I'll go to a white forest. You can find me hiding in a hollow tree." She struggled to look at him again. "Come find me?"

He wiped her bloody hair from her face with his bloody hand. "Of course."

"I can taste your tears…" she said absently.

He gathered all his strength and stood. He had to get her to the hospital wing. He knew that if he could get her there fast enough, he might still be able to save her.

As he walked down the corridor with her, he spoke to her, trying to keep her awake. "Don't close your eyes. You won't disappear, even if they're closed. You want your dreams to leave you here, but you still know the truth. You know no one's waiting for you there. You know that if you go now you'll still be alone. Stay. Stay and I'll be with you. Don't be afraid."

She could still hear him calling to her as he faded to black.


	10. Whisper

She woke up screaming.

Draco almost fell out of his chair as he scrambled into her line of sight.

Her eyes weren't open yet. She was still caught in her dream. She was falling and there was no one there to catch her. There never was. She had thought, for an instant, that Draco would be there, but he wasn't. If he would just show up, tell her it was all over… But she was alone and she was falling back into herself. She was going mad. She had to will the pain away.

"Don't give in," a voice broke through the darkness. She tried to move away from the sound. "Don't turn away. Don't try to hide."

She started to cry.

"Open your eyes, Ginevra. Merlin knows what's behind them. Open your eyes. Don't keep out the light."

"Never sleep, never die," she whispered as she struggled to open her eyes.

He couldn't quite catch her words and was about to ask what she had said when she spoke again.

"I'm afraid of what I see," she turned her face away from him. "And I know there so much more to come. I'm so afraid I can't move anymore." She was still crying. She brought a hand up to wipe her face. "Some day I'm going to be blinded by all these tears. I have to stop the pain. I have to will it all away."

He gently turned her face back toward him. "I told you not to turn away. You don't have to give in to the pain. You don't have to hide."

She closed her eyes.

"Don't do that!" his voice was tense. "Everything you are fighting is behind those lids, keep you eyes open! If you block out the light how will you expect to survive?"

"Never sleep, never die," she whispered again.

Again, he couldn't understand her.

"I'm surrounded by fallen angels," she said, a little louder, without opening her eyes, "and the voices won't stop whispering in my ear. Death is here, lying beside me. Shall I give in?" she finally opened her eyes.

Tears were once again falling from Draco's eyes.

"If I die, I can begin again. I can finally forsake all I've fallen for."

"Then die," he said.

She stared at him in disbelief.

He continued, "Die to who you were. Die to the Dark Lord. Let little Ginny Weasley rest in peace and move on. Rise again as Ginevra. Be who you were meant to be all along. Be who you know you can be. Leave all the pain and all the tears in the grave, behind you."

She looked down at her hand, the one he was holding as though both of their lives depended on it and realized that maybe they did.

"What was it you said under your breath?" he asked.

"Never sleep, never die," she answered. "If I don't dream, I don't relive it all and more. If I don't hear him in my dreams he isn't as loud while I'm awake. If I don't see him in my dreams, he comes less to me while I'm awake. If I never sleep, I don't want to die."

He held her close. "You aren't alone anymore."


	11. Bring Me to life

Later that week, Draco and Ginevra were sitting by the lake. She looked over at him and he looked back at her. She looked away. He frowned. "Why do you always look away like that?" he asked.

She turned to face him again. "How can you see into my eyes like open doors? You seem to go right down into my core where I'm still so numb." She looked out across the lake. "It feels like I don't even have a soul anymore. It's like, I'm sleeping somewhere cold."

"Then I'll find you," he said simply, "and lead you home."

She laughed bitterly. "Can you really? Can you really wake me up inside? Can you just call my name and save me from the dark? Do you really think that you can make my blood run before I fall apart? Can you really save me from the nothing I've become?"

She stood and looked down at him. "Now that I know what I'm without, you can't just leave me here. You have to find a way to make me real again. You have to bring me to life."

He stood up and met her gaze evenly. "Yes, I can wake you. I won't just leave you in the dark. Now that I've found you, I won't let you be nothing, I won't let you be undone." He bent down and kissed her.

Wrapped safe in his arms with the warmth of his kiss running through her, she could feel her blood running through her veins, coursing life to every dead and frozen part of her.

He gently broke the kiss and hugged her closely. She laid her head on his shoulder. "All this time, I can't believe how blind I was," he said, "but you were there. It seems like I've been sleeping a thousand years, but you've opened my eyes to everything."

She shuddered. "I've been here, frozen, without a thought, without a voice, without a soul. Don't let me die here. You've shown me that there's more. You alone are the life among the dead."

They held each other there, knowing that without the other, they would truly be alone, that they had been alone. They held each other there, knowing that they would never be alone again.

* * *

a/n there it is, another untraditional album fic from me. hoped you liked it. to come: let go, alternated with various matchbox twenty songs from draco's point of view. continuum. possibly the open door, under my skin, and not too late

for those that are interested, i still plan on finishing founded again someday, and possibly a handful of others i haven't been posting because my updating is so irregular that i don't want four or five unfinished, half-posted stories up. see you around, hope you liked this one


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